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by codeivore 1597 days ago
Spotify taking Rogan's stuff down is not an example of censorship, since they are a private enterprise and retain the right to decide what content they publish.

It would be censorship if the FCC (or similar Swedish org) told Spotify they had to take it down.

Rogan is free to go publish his bullshit elsewhere.

4 comments

As much as I'm not a fan of Rogan, that definition of censorship would exclude almost all US censorship in the 20th and 21st centuries, including the Hays Code, the MPAA rating system, and the Television Code.

Censorship in the US has usually been through private groups who practically control most distribution of a medium. That allows the private groups to control what the censorship consists of, allows the censorship to be less accountable and regulated, and allows it to better serve the interests of the groups who control it, while avoiding the imposition of state censorship. In the Hays Code era, you were perfectly legally able to make a film that, say, had an interracial relationship, or had clergy as less than paragons of morality, or criticized the judicial system. You just wouldn't be able to use essentially any significant production company, any actor connected with any significant production company, essentially any distributor, or essentially any theatre in the country.

Spotify controls a significant amount of the streaming market, but not as much as the MPAA did and does for film. Spotify by itself choosing not to allow content doesn't enormously harm someone's ability publish. However, I could easily see this trend turning into US-style censorship of streaming, if a few of the major streaming services started coordinating such decisions and guidelines. It would take less than ten companies coordinating in order to control well over 90% of streaming distribution. That can be every bit as strong as state censorship, if not even worse.

Your mistake here is wrongly assuming "censorship" means it must be government doing it. Censorship does not mean that, and your definition is deeply flawed. [1]

Words are important, and you can't just redefine them to suit your argument for politically motivated silencing.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/censorsh...

Denying to publish a work is not the same thing as preventing the public from accessing it.

By your logic any academic paper or book that a publisher turns down is being "censored"

Maybe context plays a role here?

What Spotify and Youtube does isn't denying to publish work, they remove content that was already published.

at any rate I think within a month or two we'll see the court case when Rogan inevitably sues them

i'll be rooting for spotify

your point is valid, but I would argue that by leaving content up on a website you're sort of publishing it at will

suppose you posted a picture I took of the grand canyon on your website

you paid me for that picture, so you have exclusive rights

you take it down?? ehhh maybe if you prevent me from publishing it elsewhere now?

this will be in court for sure

I just think that Spotify has an added responsibility on how they should manage their content.

>you paid me for that picture, so you have exclusive rights

>you take it down?? ehhh maybe if you prevent me from publishing it elsewhere now?

Well that's an extremely simple take on the subject... again there's a context.

A better take would be to not publish your picture because of someone claiming that you were acting/acted in a "improper manner" (not in the legal sense).

You have a name, JRE is a brand as well, not to mention the guests he has, so removing the content that was once published in a sense it's also sending a message to the public.

I have no clue why they removed ep. "#91 - Bill Burr". I like Bill Burr, he is a funny comedian. I look for his content to be entertained, not to be informed. Is he paddling misinformation? Is he homophobic? A racist? Or he said something someone didn't like?

Who knows. We just know that one of his appearances is no longer listed.

At this point the best would be to let the man go with the money.

> A racist?

I don’t follow tabloid stuff, so this may have changed, but at least during the filming of his recent Netflix specials: Bill Burr is married, and his wife is African-American.

yeah, some of the removals are perplexing haha
Did you read the definition at all? I don't think you did. Because the definition doesn't say that.

"a system in which an authority limits the ideas that people are allowed to express and prevents books, films, works of art, documents, or other kinds of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because they include or support certain ideas"

>By your logic any academic paper or book that a publisher turns down is being "censored"

This does not match that definition. Please read the definition.

perhaps the dictionary website is showing you something different than me

https://i.imgur.com/BdB33fL.png

Why did you underline half of the definition and pretend that's the whole thing? (hint: the "because" is important)
> Rogan is free to go publish his bullshit elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure his exclusivity contract precludes this option.

I mean, I hate Spotify and their attempt to destroy podcasting (as opposed to streaming, which using that word in this context proves they’ve already won… how depressing). But Rogan should have thought about that before he signed an exclusivity agreement with them. After all, everybody else thought about it and talked about it at the time. Nobody should be surprised by this. We all knew it was just a matter of time.
Is all censorship violation of freedom of speech? Is being intolerant of intolerant people an example of intolerance?